Monthly Archives: July 2015

This little story wouldn’t leave me alone until I had it in something approaching readable state. Bearing in mind what I posted yesterday about no tale ever being perfect, I’ve decided to give it to you now despite an almost physical urge to fiddle with it more. With this tale too I’ve achieved a long-held ambition of writing a story consisting of only dialogue, and I’ve draw inspiration from real-life incidents from the lives of friends, as well as giving a nod to the finest coffee-shop this side of the Pecos: Nigel’s “The Coffee Grind” in Bolton Market. I hope you enjoy it.

“Hang on – are you trying to break your writer’s block by scribbling random stuff? I read about that on Twitter, I think.”

“Yes, that’s it, exactly, well spotted!”

“So, you just write stuff you remember from the past? Will that work?”

“I have no idea, but at least it keeps words flowing through my brain, I guess, and out of my pencil.”

“Your Americano won’t be long. So, I see 1995 in big bold letters there. What happened in 1995?”

“Ych y fi. I’m not sure I want to tell you.”

“Oh go on. You can pay for your coffee by telling me what happened.”

“Oh, Nigel, you know that my weak spot is free… well, free anything. OK, you’re on. It was the twenty-fifth of January, 1995. I was in a nightclub with four friends. Now, I don’t know if the roofie was meant for me or one of the others, but I drank a drink and then I was completely oblivious to everything for about four hours. I dreamt that I was drinking coffee that tasted of cigarettes and came to with some awful bloke kissing me. I damn near bit off his tongue, pushed him off and threw up all over him. That dampened his enthusiasm.”

“God, girl, that must have been awful. I’m glad you woke up early enough to stop anything worse happening.”

“I was back then! There was this nice man being nice at the party. No one was ever nice to me back then. Well, I only popped out to the kitchen to look at a Breville sandwich toaster, and when I got back he was giving some other bloke a blow job in the living room.”

“Wait wait wait, never mind all that – ‘I only popped out to look at a Breville sandwich toaster’ – um what? Why? WHAT?”

“Well, they were all the rage in 1984. It was beautifully shiny, and got so very hot. Later on, I tried to fend off a tattoo-covered drummer called Spider by telling him that I was a nun. He had three bollocks and wanted to show everyone.”

“Blimey. You knew some weirdoes. I’ll bet you wished that you could have woken up from that.”

“I tried to see an opportunity to educate myself.”

“Um, did you also see the bollocks?”

“Yes I did!!”

“And you told me you were innocent!”

“I was! They all thought my innocence and shock was good entertainment value. I was only sixteen. My friend was the same age but had a string of livers.”

“Livers?”

“Sorry, lovers. Slip of the tongue.”

“Hmm. I’ll pop a little Kenyan Peaberry in your blend, for sweetness. Now what’s that next date there? 1997?”

“Oh that was when I got kicked in the head by a gay pole dancer and knocked unconscious. It was my fault. I was sat on his podium guarding handbags. He looked about twelve. His knickers matched his bandana.”

“How long was it before you woke up?”

“Actually a few days. They had to sew my cheek back together.”

“Is that what that scar is? Can you remember?”

“Yes, that’s from the pole dancer.”

“If you say so. Finally, for the perfect blend, I’ll add trauma beans, for the shock of the now. That last date there – that’s this year, isn’t it? Tell me about this year.”

“What, where? You’re seeing things.”

“No, there. Look carefully. Can you see? Can you see the numbers forming on the white page?”

“Oh, yes. They’re kind of growing out of the paper. How strange.”

“And a drawing of a city street, that’s appearing slowly too.”

“Yes.”

“It looks interesting. Why not step into the picture?”

“Yes, why not?”

“There’s a building there, isn’t there?

“The Museum of White Walls?”

“Interesting name – yes, that’ll be the one. Why not have a look inside?”

“There are five doorways there, look, each with a sign on the door. The signs read ‘Blunt’, ‘Sharp’, ‘Hot’, ‘Cold’ and ‘Loud’. Choose one and go through.”

“I’m going through the ‘Sharp’ door. There are more really white, too white, dazzling walls.”

“Anything else?”

“Shiny, sharp metal things. And there’s blood. Blood splashed across the white. Body parts in silver trays. Evil-looking machines. A thing like a toaster only it isn’t. There’s flesh hanging out of it. It’s like a torture chamber. Oh God, my eyes hurt.”

“When you wake up the pain will stop. You can wake up anytime you choose.”

“What is this place?”

“This is where you always go, but it is the place from which you need to escape. Agent Brant, listen to me. Listen to me and concentrate on my words. Some victims of intense, prolonged torture will, as a defence mechanism, enter into an imaginary world in which they fantasise about living their daily lives in real time – in your case a coffee shop. By doing this victims are able effectively to block out the realities of the torture they’re enduring. This defence mechanism is so strong that even after the victim is rescued it can take months of intense therapy to extract subjects from their delusion. Psychologists such as I will role-play everyday situations, gradually taking the subject into their past memories, and on to face what they have endured, hopefully to lead them away from it. There’s a way out, Jennifer, look, a door marked ‘Exit’. Take my hand. I’ll lead you through the exit and back to your normal life. Trust me – it’s time to wake up now. Please wake up.”

“I don’t fall for your tricks that easily, Nigel. Now, is my coffee ready? I should be going now.”

Like this:

Once it’s done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you’re ready, pick it up and read it, as if you’ve never read it before. If there are things you aren’t satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that’s revision.

Thus spake Neil Gaiman, and I have proven the value of this advice by re-reading ‘Glint’, some weeks after it was ‘finished’, only to find that it still needs more polish, and is as clunky as a wooden bucket in more than a few places. However, while I am polishing, I shall bear in mind my other favourite piece of Gaiman advice, which immediately follows the first. Nothing is ever perfect. We have to let it go sometime.

Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

Hope closed her eyes and let the late summer sun warm her face. Back in the days when she was being beaten in the school toilets, being called Spudface, being made constantly to feel like shit, Hope had almost given up on life itself.

University had been a little better, but she had still noticed the funny looks, the hushed voices when she entered a room. There had also been a lot of spite, and once someone had spat on her because she’d easily managed to get in the front row at a concert that everyone on campus was desperately trying to blag a ticket for.

Then he came into her life. That summer evening last year, he had stepped in when she was being pushed about helplessly, spun around by four horrible men who simultaneously shouted at her how ugly she was while groping her tits. He had stood before her like an avenging champion, fists clenched, defying her tormenters to go for him instead. They’d left, hurling vile insults about her, about her deformed body, her twisted face.

He had taken her for coffee then and, without asking, bought her millionaire’s shortbread. She still, to this day, did not know how he had known that was her favourite. All through the evening they had talked about perception, both that of other people, and the self-perception that comes from within. How your own skewed view of what you were, your own faulty self-image, built from years of cold insult, could actually turn you into a thing not true.

Unlike anyone else she had ever met in her entire life, this man had told her that she was beautiful. How much he admired her. And slowly she had realised something important. Something life-changing. If you believe that you are beautiful, it is just as good as being beautiful – and suddenly you are. Beauty shines out of you with that knowledge.

The music started, and Hope adjusted her veil. She pushed down on the ribbon-bedecked wheels, and gracefully eased her wheelchair through the flower-strewn summer orchard to where her new husband stood waiting.

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I do enjoy researching the middle ages for ‘The Raven’s Wing’. It turns up delights like the Urine Wheel, used by medieval uromancers to analyse the look, smell & taste (yes, you heard) of a patient’s piss in order to ascertain their health and, in some cases, predict their future. You can bet that this will make an appearance in the book.

And then I discover that we can now buy Urine Wheel earrings. What a place of wonder is this modern world.